This is the second volume on fourth century Coptic documents written on papyri and boards, found in the ruins of houses at Kellis, the Roman predecessor of the village of Ismant el-Kharab in the Dakhleh Oasis. It is concerned with 75 letters and associated household accounts and lists, mostly from House 3. The documents are transcribed and translated with commentary. Together, these two volumes break new ground in providing a unique insight into the social and economic relations of a sectarian group within a late antique village, and the opportunity to study that group’s interaction with other communities. They give voice to ordinary people and provide genuine insights into literacy and the role of women, communications and travel, multilingual society and normative forms of belief and practice.

CONTENTS

Preface
Introduction
Abbreviations

HOUSE 3

Letter on a wooden board (with traces of an earlier text in Syriac)
Texts perhaps additional to groups published in Volume 1
Manichaean letters
Letters by Pamour (and Maria)
Letters by Pegosh (brother of Pamour)
Letters from Philammon to Theognostos (Louishai) and Hor
Letters from Theognostos
Letters from and to Ploutogenes
Kyra / Loihat / Timotheos group
Individual and unplaced documents and letters
List of other (not edited) Coptic fragments from House 3

HOUSE 4

Letters
Inventory
Invocation
List of other (not edited) Coptic fragments from House 4

Tuesday, September 02, 2014

Call for Papers: Singles and the Single Life in the Roman and Later Roman World Academia Belgica, Rome, 28–30 June 2015

Call for Papers:
Singles and the Single Life in the Roman and Later Roman World
Academia Belgica, Rome, 28–30 June 2015

Organizers:Prof. Dr. Christian Laes, University of Antwerp, Free University of BrusselsProf. Dr. Sabine R. Huebner, Universität Basel, Switzerland
Deadline for proposals: 15 October 2014
Singleness is not only a new and rapidly increasing lifestyle of the present day. It has also become a fashionable field of research in social history. During a series of sessions at the European Social Science History Conference (Glasgow, 2012), questions were raised about the structural and cultural particularities of ‘single life’ in cities. A conference at the University of Antwerp (Singles in the Cities of North-West Europe, c. 1000–2000) in March 2013 further expanded upon the insights from the Glasgow conference.
In this new field of research the silence of ancient historians is striking. This may be partly explained by the lack of demographical data: there are virtually no statistics or censuses to indicate how many men or women were single in the towns and villages of the Roman Empire. But far more problematic is the definition of singleness. In a society which did not yet know the Christian concept of marriage, in an environment where both the contracting of a marriage and divorce were quick and easy, the lines between married and unmarried were somewhat vague. This may explain why there is no proper or much-used Latin or ancient Greek word to denote the status of a bachelor or spinster. We might even raise the question whether singleness for the ancient period could possible be defined as being unmarried. But even without the criterion of marriage, other approaches towards singleness in antiquity are possible.
Since this is the first ever conference on the theme, and with the aim of publishing a volume which will set the course for further research, we are inviting papers from a wide chronological and thematic range, incorporating the methods and questions historians of other periods use, to consider these questions:
(1) The possibility of some demographic insight into singleness and the way it was distributed (widows, unmarried, divorced, orphan).
(2) The difference between the urban and rural environment.
(3) Gendered aspects of the issue.
(4) Social and economic drawbacks or incentives for single persons.
(5) Social networks and the possibility of a subculture of singles.
(6) Juridical consequences of singleness.
(7) Funerary commemoration and representation of singleness.
(8) The impact of Christianity.
Confirmed speakers include (apart from the organizers Laes and Huebner) Anna Boozer (New York), Ville Vuolanto (Tampere/Oslo), Kyle Harper (Oklahoma), Judith Evans Grubbs (Emory), and Hanne Sigismund Nielsen (Calgary).
The conference organizers welcome abstracts of about 300 words on ‘Singles and the Single Life in the Roman and Later Roman World’ based on analysis of literary, documentary, archaeological, and iconographic evidence. Papers should be 20 minutes in length, with 10 minutes of discussion time allowed after each individual paper, and should be read in English. We encourage junior researchers and recent PhD holders to apply as well.
Please submit your abstract by email to Prof. Dr. Christian Laes (christian.laes@uantwerpen.be) or Prof. Dr. Sabine R. Huebner (sabine.huebner@unibas.ch). Please include the full title of your abstract and a short biographical note on your affiliation and previous research. The deadline for proposals is 15 October 2014.